When Two Worlds Collide.

If you hadn't already heard: social networking is the future of public relations. (Let me know if that's not yet the case in your part of the world).

It's certainly becoming a prevalent form of professional communication in Silicon Valley as more and more web-savvy reporters invite pitches from PR folks on sites like Facebook. Not surprisingly then, PR folks are rushing onto Facebook and, well, so is everyone else. Everyone else, including your family, your old college friends, random people from your past...and there's nothing to keep them apart!

As a mildly skeptical early adopter, I was amused this week to see BusinessWeek's Jon Fine put into writing a question that had been troubling me:  Do I really want my personal life and my private life to collide on sites like MySpace and Facebook?

The issue is becoming more of a hot topic as users like me encounter, for example, others 'tagging' pictures of them on Facebook for all to see. I've had 45 pictures attributed to me (i.e. not taken or uploaded by me, but identified as me by others), none of them, as yet, feature me particularly compromised in any way, but it could happen I suppose, and I'm not entirely sure that'll be a good thing! So what can I (and you) do to prevent your boss discovering you used to dye your hair purple and adore the Sisters of Mercy?

Alan Lewis, eBay's Chief Evangelist came into the office today to show off some eBay Facebook widges and, not surprisingly, the question came up again: What if I don't want my boss to see that my old college friend has bitten me and now I'm a zombie?

The answer, it seems, lies in 'setting permissions'.  Alan pointed out that it's fairly easy to control the content that others see attached to your Facebook profile. On eBay's Marketplace, for example, you can choose to have people see what you're buying, but not what you're selling. The general principle applies to most applications, Alan says.

There you go...now you don't need to fear the future. Right, I'm off to delete some zombies.

David McCulloch

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